Page 39 of The Christmas Express

Ember

This Christmas, I thought I’d either be curled up in a cabin, reunited with my ex-girlfriend, or on a red-eye flight back to the UK, my tail between my legs. I didn’t expect to be dancing under a canopy of snow at a home-made Christmas party with a new crush who knows just how to make me smile.

Right now, I’m happy.

When she takes my hand, lacing her fingers in mine, I’m even happier.

When the lights flicker off, and the train judders, and the announcer says we won’t be even reaching Vancouver until late tomorrow at the earliest, my head is demanding that I feel worried or sad or like my opportunity for reconciliation and happiness is slipping away into the snowstorm. But my gut is disagreeing.

I’m being stopped in my tracks, literally.

‘Alex, what are the chances of us making it to Vancouver tomorrow night?’ Cali asks, coming over to us, Luke close by, their arms touching. Sara, Joss and Joe filter over as well.

‘I don’t know any more than you guys.’ Alex shrugs, chewing her lip. She looks nervous. ‘You’re worried about missing the wedding?’

Cali nods. ‘We have to make it; we’ve come this far.’

Outside the train, somewhere high up a mountain, a rumble is heard, and we all fall silent. Listening. Alex takes my hand.

The group have separated. Only to different seats within the celestial carriage, keeping a little distance while keeping an eye on each other.

There haven’t been any more scary noises, but the train is cold and still while we all await further news. Alex has taken herself off to get us an update from some of her colleagues, and I’m swirling a glass of whisky, sat beside Luke, who is staring out of the window.

I stand up and stretch, catching Cali’s eye and motioning for her to follow me down the stairs.

We bundle inside our sweatshirts in the dim divider between the carriages, watching the snow swirling beyond the window.

I have to ask. ‘What the hell happened in Spain?’

Cali sighs. She sounds tired. ‘To be honest, you’d probably get a different answer depending on who you asked.’

‘Fair enough. What’s your answer?’

Cali loses herself for a moment, watching the snowfall. And just when I’m wondering if she’s fallen asleep standing up, she starts.

‘It all just came out of nowhere, really. Well, that’s not true. It came out of me and Luke.’

I raise my eyebrows, but wait for her to continue.

‘Luke and I, we’d always been close, always flirty, always chemistry bubbling about under the surface, but we were very much part of a group of six solid friends. Then, one week before we were flying to Spain, he and I, finally – I thought – got together.’

She quietens again for a moment, smiling at the memory.

‘It was a good week, I take it?’

Cali laughs. ‘The best. We were... delirious. I couldn’t believe he felt the same as me. That week we cocooned ourselves, enjoyed each other away from the rest of them, figured out what we were before letting anyone else in. Then we went to Spain.

‘From the moment we told the others that we were together, our protective little self-contained bubbles began bursting. Some weren’t happy with this new development between him and me, and made that clear.

Fault was being found in everything from the weather to the accommodation to the conversation.

Arguments were breaking out and being walked away from unresolved.

And then things came to a head when we were out at dinner, at a table in the centre of a restaurant, surrounded by delicious tapas that went cold as we had a blowout of an argument unlike.

.. anything I’d ever experienced. Things were said that weren’t taken back, truths were revealed, resentments uncovered, and one by one we went home early – separately. ’

‘So all this because of one argument?’

‘It’s hard to explain, but it all just got so... mean. You know? We were supposed to be best friends, but we were picking at each other’s biggest insecurities, taking shots that are just hard to come back from.’

‘And you couldn’t work through it?’

Cali leans her forehead against the cold glass window, and closes her eyes.

‘Everything had changed. And then they all fled, we scattered before ever giving ourselves a chance to repair. And you could say that people don’t mean the things they say in the heat of an argument, but this felt like everyone did mean it.

It felt like these were deep-seated, true feelings, finally bubbling over. ’

‘What kind of thing, if you don’t mind me asking?’

‘Well, Sara was stinging Joss about the failed business and the lost money, something she already felt awful about. Bryn called Joe a doormat and said none of us even really knew him after all these years because he never came out of Joss’s shadow.

Joss called me needy.’ She stops and shakes her head.

‘The list goes on. But in short, Luke and I “hooked up”, and I ruined the whole dynamic, for everyone. I felt like we’d doomed the whole trip. ’

‘That’s how you feel?’

She looks drained, but nods, then stands up straight. ‘I’m going to the bathroom.’

‘You okay?’

‘I’m okay.’

She leaves and I climb back up the stairs, returning to my seat beside Luke, and Cali reappears a few minutes later.

I turn our conversation over in my head. These guys are living in the past and look what it’s doing to them. I study Luke, who is staring out of the window still.

I follow his gaze, and realise that, actually, he’s staring at the reflection of Cali on the other side of the carriage. Those two.

‘Luke, how far would you go for someone that might be the one?’

‘What?’ he says, glancing at me like he’s been caught, then drops himself in it further by flicking his gaze straight over to Cali, who has her chin on the seat in front of her like a forlorn puppy, staring forward at the blackness outside.

I shake my head and exhale. ‘I think I might be making a big mistake,’ I say, keeping my voice low. I don’t want them all jumping all over this, but Luke, well, I think he might get it.

‘In what way?’ he asks, his voice just as quiet, respecting my privacy.

‘I think, maybe, I might have been a bit delusional about Bryn. What the hell was I thinking, coming all the way out here? She’s going to hate me for doing this to her, isn’t she? So what does this mean?’

He’s quiet for a while, thinking, nodding. ‘I guess I think... you have to follow your heart, but it’s hard to know if your heart is telling you how you feel now, or if it’s, like, muscle memory. You won’t know unless you follow it and really listen, I guess.’

‘Does following it all the way to Vancouver seem like a good idea to you?’

‘For you? I can’t answer that. But I don’t think following it has to mean literally taking a physical journey to try and get the answers from someone else. You probably know the answers, whether you’re on one side of Canada or the other, or back on your beach at home.’

I wriggle my nose in thought. He’s not wrong. I’ve come this far, maybe I just plough on, see it through to the end. But Alex’s face is there, and I like her, and I’m not saying she’s now The One, but the fact she’s made an impact on me... maybe that’s the push I needed?

‘I think I want to kiss Alex,’ I whisper. ‘And I don’t think I would be feeling like that if I was still in love with Bryn.’